Composition

Wagner was forced to abandon his position as conductor of the
Dresden Opera in 1849, as there was a warrant posted for his arrest
for his participation in the unsuccessful May
Revolution. He left his wife, Minna, in Dresden, and fled to Zurich.
There, in 1852, he met the wealthy silk trader Otto Wesendonck.
Wesendonck became a supporter of Wagner and bankrolled the composer
for several years. Wesendonck's wife, Mathilde, became enamoured of the
composer. Though Wagner was working on his epic Der
Ring des Nibelungen, he found himself intrigued by the legend of Tristan und
Isolde.

The re-discovery of medieval Germanic poetry, including Gottfried von Strassburg's
version of Tristan, the Nibelunglied and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, left a large impact
on the German Romantic movements during the
mid-19th century. The story of Tristan and Isolde is a
quintessential romance of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Several versions of the story exist, the earliest dating to the
middle of the 12th century. Gottfried's version, part of the
"courtly" branch of the legend, had a huge influence on later
German literature.[2]

According to his autobiography, Mein Leben,
Wagner decided to dramatise the Tristan legend after his friend,
Karl Ritter, attempted to do so, writing that:

"He had, in fact, made a point of giving prominence to the
lighter phases of the romance, whereas it was its all-pervading
tragedy that impressed me so deeply that I felt convinced it should
stand out in bold relief, regardless of minor details."[3]

This impact, together with his discovery of the philosophy of
Arthur Schopenhauer in October 1854, led Wagner to find himself in
a "serious mood created by Schopenhauer, which was trying to find
ecstatic expression. It was some such mood that inspired the
conception of a Tristan und Isolde."[4] Wagner
wrote of his preoccupations with Schopenhauer and Tristan
in a letter to Franz
Liszt (December 16th 1854):

“Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I
shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams in which,
from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter
repletion. I have devised in my mind a Tristan und Isolde,
the simplest, yet most full-blooded musical conception imaginable,
and with the ‘black flag’ that waves at the end I shall cover
myself over – to die.”[5]

By the end of 1854, Wagner had sketched out all three acts of an
opera on the Tristan theme, based on Gottfried von Strassburg's
telling of the story. While the earliest extant sketches date from
December 1856, it was not until August 1857, however, that Wagner
began devoting his attention entirely to the opera, putting aside
the composition of Siegfried to do so. On 20 August he
began the prose sketch for the opera, and the libretto (or poem, as Wagner
preferred to call it) was completed by September 18.[6] Wagner,
at this time, had moved into a cottage built in the grounds of
Wesendonck's villa, where, during his work on Tristan und
Isolde, he became passionately involved with Mathilde
Wesendonck. Whether or not this relationship was platonic remains
uncertain. One evening in September of that year, Wagner read the
finished poem of "Tristan" to an audience including his wife,
Minna, his current muse, Mathilde,
and his future mistress (and later wife), Cosima von
Bülow.

By October 1857, Wagner had begun the composition sketch of the
first Act. During November, however, he set five of Mathilde's
poems to music known today as the "Wesendonck Lieder." This was an
unusual move by Wagner, who almost never set his music to any
libretto other than his own, and who was rarely inspired by
anything other than a purely dramatic theme. Two of these songs
were set to music which would later play important roles in
Tristan, and Wagner marked them as "Studies for Tristan und
Isolde". "Traume" uses a motif that forms the love duet in Act 2 of
Tristan, while "Im Triebhaus" introduces a theme that later became
the Prelude to Act 3 of Tristan.[7]

In April 1858 Wagner's wife Minna intercepted a note from Wagner
to Mathilde, and, despite Wagner's protests that she was putting a
"vulgar interpretation" on the note, she accused first Wagner and
then Mathilde of unfaithfulness.[8] After
enduring much misery, Wagner persuaded Minna, who had a heart
condition, to rest at a spa while
Otto Wesendonck took Mathilde to Italy. It was during the absence
of the two women that Wagner began the composition sketch of the
second Act of Tristan. However, Minna's return in July
1858 did not clear the air, and on August 17th, Wagner
was forced to leave both Minna and Mathilde and move to Venice.

Wagner would later describe his last days in Zurich as "a
veritable Hell." Minna wrote to Mathilde before departing for
Dresden:

"I must tell you with a bleeding heart that you have succeeded
in separating my husband from me after nearly twenty-two years of
marriage. May this noble deed contribute to your peace of mind, to
your happiness."[9]

Wagner finished the second Act of Tristan during his
eight-month exile in Venice. In March 1859, fearing extradition to Saxony, where he was still
considered a fugitive,
Wagner moved to Lucerne
where he composed the last Act, completing it in August 1859.

Premiere

Ludwig and Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld as Tristan and
Isolde

Tristan und Isolde proved to be a difficult opera to
stage. Paris, the centre of the
operatic world in the middle of the 19th century, was an
obvious choice. However, after a disastrous staging of Tannhäuser at the Paris Opéra,
Wagner offered the work to the Karlsruhe opera in 1861. When he visited the
Vienna Court Opera to rehearse possible
singers for this production, the management at Vienna suggested staging the opera in Vienna.
Originally, the tenor Alois Ander was employed to sing the part of
Tristan, but later proved incapable of learning the role. Despite
over 70 rehearsals between 1862 and 1864, Tristan und
Isolde was unable to be staged in Vienna, winning the opera a
reputation as unperformable.

It was only after Wagner's adoption by Ludwig II
of Bavaria that enough resources could be found to mount the
premiere of Tristan und Isolde. Hans von
Bülow was chosen to conduct the production at the Munich Opera,
despite the fact that Wagner was having an affair with his wife, Cosima von Bülow.
Even then, the planned premiere on 15 May 1865 had to be postponed
because Isolde, Malvina
Schnorr von Carolsfeld, had gone hoarse. The work finally
premiered on June 10th 1865. Ludwig Schnorr von
Carolsfeld sang the role of Tristan and Malvina, his wife, sang
Isolde. Three weeks after the fourth performance, Ludwig Schnorr
von Carolsfeld died suddenly—prompting speculation that the
exertion involved in singing the part of Tristan had killed him.
The stress of performing Tristan has also claimed the
lives of conductorsFelix Mottl in 1911 and
Joseph
Keilberth in 1968. Both men died after collapsing while
conducting the second Act of the opera.

The next production of Tristan was in Weimar in 1874, and Wagner himself supervised
another production of Tristan, this time in Berlin, in
March 1876, but the opera was only given in his own theatre at the
Bayreuth
Festival, after Wagner's death. Cosima Wagner, his widow, oversaw the first Bayreuth
production of Tristan in 1886, a production that was
widely acclaimed. The first production outside of Germany was given
at the Theatre Royal
Drury Lane in 1882, conducted by Hans Richter, who also conducted the first
Covent
Garden production two years later. The first American
performance was at the Metropolitan Opera in December 1886
under the baton of Anton
Seidl.

Significance
in the development of classical music

The score of Tristan und Isolde has often been cited as
a landmark in the development of Western music.[10] Wagner
uses throughout Tristan a remarkable range of orchestral
colour, harmony and polyphony and does so with a freedom rarely
found in his earlier operas. The very first chord in the piece, the
Tristan
chord, is of great significance in the move away from
traditional tonal harmony as
it resolves to another dissonant chord:[11]

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The opera is noted for its numerous expansions of harmonic
practice; for instance, one significant innovation is the frequent
use of two consecutive triads with roots lying a tritone
(diminished fifth or augmented fourth) apart. Tristan und
Isolde is also notable for its use of harmonic suspension -- a device used by a
composer to create musical tension by exposing the listener to a
series of prolonged unfinished cadences, thereby inspiring a desire
and expectation on the part of the listener for musical
resolution.[12] While
suspension is a common compositional device (in use since before
the Renaissance), Wagner was one of the first composers to employ
harmonic suspension over the course of an entire work. The cadences
first introduced in the Prelude are not resolved until the finale
of Act 3, and, on a number of occasions throughout the opera,
Wagner primes the audience for a musical climax with a series of
chords building in tension—only to deliberately defer the
anticipated resolution. One particular example of this technique
occurs at the end of the love duet in Act 2 ("Wie sie fassen, wie
sie lassen...") where Tristan and Isolde gradually build up to a
musical (perhaps sexual) climax, only to have the expected
resolution destroyed by the dissonant interruption of Kurwenal
("Rette Dich, Tristan!"). The long-awaited completion of this
cadence series arrives only in the final Liebestod, during which the musical
resolution (at "In des Welt-Atems wehendem All") coincides with the
moment of Isolde's death.[13]

Synopsis

"Isolde" by Aubrey
Beardsley, 1895 illustration for The Studio magazine of the
tragic opera heroine drinking the love potion

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Act 1

Isolde, promised to King Marke in marriage, and her handmaid,
Brangäne, are quartered aboard Tristan’s ship being transported to
the king's lands in Cornwall. The opera opens with the voice of a
young sailor singing of a “wild Irish maid,” ("West-wärts
schweift der Blick") which Isolde construes to be a mocking
reference to herself. In a furious outburst, she wishes the seas to
rise up and sink the ship, killing all on board ("Erwache mir
wieder, kühne Gewalt"). In what is termed the "narrative and
curse" her scorn and rage are directed particularly at Tristan, the
knight responsible for taking her to Marke, and Isolde sends
Brangäne to command Tristan to appear before her ("Befehlen
liess' dem Eigenholde"). Tristan, however, refuses Brangäne's
request, claiming that his place is at the helm. His henchman,
Kurwenal, answers more brusquely, saying that Isolde is in no
position to command Tristan and reminds Brangäne that Isolde’s
previous fiancé, Morold, was
killed by Tristan ("Herr Morold zog zu Meere her.")

Brangäne returns to Isolde to relate these events, and Isolde
sadly tells her of how, following the death of Morold, a stranger
called Tantris was brought to her. Tantris was found mortally
wounded in a boat ("von einem Kahn, der klein und arm"),
and Isolde used her healing powers to restore him to health. She
discovered during Tantris' recovery, however, that he was actually
Tristan, the murderer of her fiancé. Isolde attempted to kill the
man with his own sword as he lay helpless before her. However,
Tristan looked not at the sword that would kill him, but into her
eyes ("Er sah' mir in die Augen"). His action pierced her
heart and she was unable to slay him. Tristan was allowed to leave,
but later returned with the intention of marrying Isolde to his
uncle, King Marke. Isolde, furious at Tristan’s betrayal, insists
that he drink atonement to her, and from her medicine-chest
produces a vial to make the drink. Brangäne is shocked to see that
it is a lethal poison.

Kurwenal appears in the women’s quarters ("Auf auf! Ihr
Frauen!") and announces that Tristan has agreed to see Isolde
after all. When Tristan arrives, Isolde tells him that she now
knows that he was Tantris, and that he owes her his life. Tristan
agrees to drink the potion, now prepared by Brangäne, even though
he knows it may kill him ("Wohl kenn' ich Irland's
Königin"). As he drinks, Isolde tears the remainder of the
potion from him and drinks it herself. At this moment, each
believing that their lives are about to end, the two declare their
love for each other ("Tristan! Isolde!"). Kurwenal, who
announces the imminent arrival on board of King Marke, interrupts
their rapture. Isolde asks Brangäne which potion she prepared and
Brangäne replies, as the sailors hail the arrival of King Marke,
that it was not poison, but
rather a love
potion.

Tristan und Isolde by Ferdinand Leeke

Act 2

King Marke leads a hunting party out into the night, leaving the
castle empty save for Isolde and Brangäne, who stand beside a
burning brazier. Isolde, listening to the hunting horns, believes
several times that the hunting party is far enough away to warrant
the extinguishing of the brazier—the prearranged signal for Tristan
to join her ("Nicht Hörnerschall tönt so hold"). Brangäne
warns Isolde that Melot, one of King Marke’s knights, has seen the
amorous looks exchanged between Tristan and Isolde and suspects
their passion ("Ein Einz'ger war's, ich achtet' es wohl").
Isolde, however, believes Melot to be Tristan’s most loyal friend,
and, in a frenzy of desire, extinguishes the flames. Brangäne
retires to the ramparts to keep watch as Tristan arrives.

The lovers, at last alone and freed from the constraints of
courtly life, declare their passion for each other . Tristan
decries the realm of daylight which is false, unreal, and keeps
them apart. It is only in night, he claims, that they can truly be
together and only in the long night of death can they be eternally
united ("O sink' hernieder, Nacht der Liebe"). During
their long tryst, Brangäne calls a warning several times that the
night is ending ("Einsam wachend in der Nacht"), but her
cries fall upon deaf ears. The day breaks in on the lovers as Melot
leads King Marke and his men to find Tristan and Isolde in each
other's arms. Marke is heart-broken, not only because of his
adopted son Tristan's betrayal but also because Marke, too, has
come to love Isolde ("Mir - dies? Dies, Tristan -
mir?").

Tristan turns to Isolde, who agrees to follow him again into the
realm of night. Melot and Tristan fight, but, at the crucial
moment, Tristan throws his sword aside and Melot mortally wounds
him.

Act 3

Kurwenal has brought Tristan home to his castle at Kareol in Brittany. A shepherd pipes a
mournful tune and asks if Tristan is awake. Kurwenal replies that
only Isolde’s arrival can save Tristan, and the shepherd offers to
keep watch and claims that he will pipe a joyful tune to mark the
arrival of any ship. Tristan awakes ("Die alte Weise - was
weckt sie mich?") and laments his fate — to be, once again, in
the false realm of daylight, once more driven by unceasing
unquenchable yearning ("Wo ich erwacht' Weilt ich nicht").
Tristan's sorrow ends when Kurwenal tells him that Isolde is on her
way. Tristan, overjoyed, asks if her ship is in sight, but only a
sorrowful tune from the shepherd’s pipe is heard.

Tristan relapses and recalls that the shepherd’s mournful tune
is the same as was played when he was told of the deaths of his
father and mother ("Muss ich dich so versteh'n, du alte, ernst
Weise"). He rails once again against his desires and against
the fateful love-potion ("verflucht sei, furchbarer
Trank!")until, exhausted, he collapses in delirium. After his
collapse, the shepherd is heard piping the arrival of Isolde’s
ship, and, as Kurwenal rushes to meet her, Tristan tears the
bandages from his wounds in his excitement ("Hahei! Mein Blut,
lustig nun fliesse!"). As Isolde arrives at his side, Tristan
dies with her name on his lips.

Isolde collapses beside her deceased lover just as the
appearance of another ship is announced. Kurwenal spies Melot,
Marke and Brangäne arriving ("Tod und Hölle! Alles zur
Hand!") and, in an attempt to avenge Tristan, furiously
attacks Melot. Both Melot and Kurwenal, however, are killed in the
fight. Marke and Brangäne finally reach Tristan and Isolde. Marke,
grieving over the body of his “truest friend,” explains that he
learned of the love-potion from Brangäne and has come not to part
the lovers, but to unite them ("Warum Isolde, warum mir
das?"). Isolde appears to wake at this, but instead, in a
final aria describing her vision
of Tristan risen again (the “Liebestod”, "love death"), dies of grief
("Mild und leise wie er lächelt").

Wagner designed the Holztrompete for the shepherd's pipe.
This was used in Munich for the first performance. In 1891 it was
supplanted in Bayreuth by the Heckel-clarina.[14] The
tarogato[15]
has also been used to represent the Shepherd's pipe, however in
most performances the cor anglais is used.

Influence of
Schopenhauer on Tristan und Isolde

Wagner's friend, Georg Herwegh, introduced him in late
1854 to the work of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.[16] The
composer was immediately struck by the philosophical ideas to be
found in “Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung” (The World as Will and
Representation), and the similarities between the two men's
world-views became clear.[17]

Man, according to Schopenhauer, is driven by continued,
unachievable desires, and the gulf between our desires and the
possibility of achieving them leads to misery while the world is a
representation of an unknowable reality. Our representation of the
world (which is false) is Phenomenon, while the unknowable reality is
Noumenon: concepts
originally posited by Kant. Schopenhauer’s influence on
Tristan und Isolde is most evident in the second and third
acts. The second act, in which the lovers meet, and the third act,
during which Tristan longs for release from the passions that
torment him, have often proved puzzling to opera-goers unfamiliar
with Schopenhauer’s work.

Wagner uses the metaphor of day and night in the second act to
designate the realms inhabited by Tristan and Isolde.[18] The
world of Day is one in which the lovers are bound by the dictates
of King Marke’s court and in which the lovers must smother their
mutual love and pretend as if they do not care for each other: it
is a realm of falsehood and unreality. Under the dictates of the
realm of Day, Tristan was forced to remove Isolde from Ireland and
to marry her to his Uncle Marke—actions against Tristan's secret
desires. The realm of Night, in contrast, is the representation of
intrinsic reality, in which the lovers can be together and their
desires can be openly expressed and reach fulfilment: it is the
realm of oneness, truth and reality and can only be achieved fully
upon the deaths of the lovers. The realm of Night, therefore,
becomes also the realm of death: the only world in which Tristan
and Isolde can be as one forever, and it is this realm that Tristan
speaks of at the end of Act Two (“Dem Land das Tristan meint, der
Sonne Licht nicht scheint”).[19] In
Act Three, Tristan rages against the daylight and frequently cries
out for release from his desires (Sehnen). In this way, Wagner
implicitly equates the realm of Day with Schopenhauer’s concept of
Phenomenon and the
realm of Night with Schopenhauer’s concept of Noumenon.[20] While
none of this is explicitly stated in the libretto, Tristan’s
comments on Day and Night in Acts 2 and 3 make it very clear that
this was, in fact, Wagner’s intention.

The world-view of Schopenhauer dictates that the only way for
man to achieve inner peace is to renounce his desires: a theme that
Wagner explored fully in his last opera, Parsifal. In fact Wagner even considered
having the character of Parsifal meet Tristan during his sufferings in
Act 3, but later rejected the idea.[21]

Reactions to Tristan und
Isolde

Although Tristan und Isolde is performed in major opera
houses around the world presently, critical opinion of the opera
was initially unfavourable. The 5 July 1865 edition of the Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung reported: "Not to mince words, it is the
glorification of sensual pleasure, tricked out with every
titillating device, it is unremitting materialism, according to
which human beings have no higher destiny than, after living the
life of turtle doves, ‘to vanish in sweet odours, like a breath'.
In the service of this end, music has been enslaved to the word;
the most ideal of the Muses has been made to grind the colours for
indecent paintings... (Wagner) makes sensuality itself the true
subject of his drama.... We think that the stage presentation of
the poem Tristan und Isolde amounts to an act of
indecency. Wagner does not show us the life of heroes of Nordic
sagas which would edify and strengthen the spirit of his German
audiences. What he does present is the ruination of the life of
heroes through sensuality."[22]

Eduard
Hanslick's reaction in 1868 to the Prelude to Tristan
was that it "reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr
whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel." The
first performance in London's Drury Lane Theatre drew the
following response from The Era in 1882: "We cannot
refrain from making a protest against the worship of animal passion
which is so striking a feature in the late works of Wagner. We
grant there is nothing so repulsive in Tristan as in
Die
Walküre, but the system is the same. The passion is unholy
in itself and its representation is impure, and for those reasons
we rejoice in believing that such works will not become popular. If
they did we are certain their tendency would be mischievous, and
there is, therefore, some cause for congratulation in the fact that
Wagner's music, in spite of all its wondrous skill and power,
repels a greater number than it fascinates."

Mark Twain, on a
visit to Germany, heard Tristan at Bayreuth and commented:
"I know of some, and have heard of many, who could not sleep after
it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here.
Sometimes I feel like the one sane person in the community of the
mad."[23]

Clara
Schumann wrote that Tristan und Isolde was "the most
repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life".[24]

With the passage of time, Tristan became more
favourably regarded. In an interview shortly before his death, Giuseppe Verdi
said that he "stood in wonder and terror" before Wagner's
Tristan. In The Perfect Wagnerite, writer and
satirist George Bernard Shaw writes that
Tristan was "an astonishingly intense and faithful
translation into music of the emotions which accompany the union of
a pair of lovers" and described it as "a poem of destruction and
death". Richard
Strauss, initially dismissive of Tristan, claimed that Wagner's
music "would kill a cat and would turn rocks into scrambled eggs
from fear of [its] hideous dischords." Later, however, Strauss
became part of the Bayreuth coterie and writing to
Cosima Wagner in
1892 declared: "I have conducted my first Tristan. It was
the most wonderful day of my life." He later wrote that
"Tristan und Isolde marked the end of all romanticism.
Here the yearning of the entire 19th century is gathered in one
focal point."

The conductor Bruno
Walter heard his first Tristan und Isolde in 1889 as a
student: "So there I sat in the topmost gallery of the Berlin Opera
House, and from the first sound of the cellos my heart contracted
spasmodically... Never before has my soul been deluged with such
floods of sound and passion, never had my heart been consumed by
such yearning and sublime bliss... A new epoch had begun: Wagner
was my god, and I wanted to become his prophet." Arnold
Schoenberg referred to Wagner's technique of shifting chords in
Tristan as "phenomena of incredible adaptability and
nonindependence roaming, homeless, among the spheres of keys; spies
reconnoitering weaknesses; to exploit them in order to create
confusion, deserters for whom surrender of their own personality is
an end in itself”.

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of
Wagner's staunchest allies in his younger years, wrote that, for
him, “Tristan and Isolde is the real opus
metaphysicum of all art. . . insatiable and sweet craving for
the secrets of night and death. . . it is overpowering in its
simple grandeur”. In a letter to his friend Erwin Rohde in October
1868, Nietzsche described his reaction to Tristan's
Prelude: “I simply cannot bring myself to remain critically aloof
from this music; every nerve in me is atwitch, and it has been a
long time since I had such a lasting sense of ecstasy as with this
overture”. Even after his break with Wagner, Nietzsche continued to
consider Tristan a masterpiece: “Even now I am still in
search of a work which exercises such a dangerous fascination, such
a spine-tingling and blissful infinity as Tristan — I have
sought in vain, in every art.”[25]

Recordings

Tristan und Isolde has a long recorded history and most
of the major Wagner conductors since
the end of the First World War have had their
interpretations captured on disc. The limitations of recording
technology meant that until the 1930s it was difficult to record
the entire opera, however recordings of excerpts or single acts
exist going back to 1901, when cylinder recordings of Tristan were
made at the Metropolitan
opera.[26]

Following the war, the performances at the Bayreuth
Festival with Martha Mödl and Ramon Vinay under Herbert von
Karajan (1952) were highly regarded, and these performances are
now available as a live recording. In the 1960s, the soprano Birgit Nilsson
was considered the major Isolde interpreter, and she was often
partnered with the Tristan of Wolfgang Windgassen. Their
performance at Bayreuth in 1966 under the baton of Karl Böhm was captured
by Deutsche Grammophon -- a performance often hailed as one of the
best Tristan recordings.[28]

Karajan did not record the opera officially until 1971-72.
Karajan's selection of a lighter soprano voice (Helga Dernesch)
as Isolde, paired with an extremely intense Jon Vickers and the unusual balance between
orchestra and singers favoured by Karajan was controversial. In the
1980s recordings by conductors such as Carlos Kleiber, Reginald
Goodall and Leonard Bernstein were mostly
considered to be important for the interpretation of the conductor,
rather than that of the lead performers. The set by Kleiber is
notable as Isolde was sung by the famous Mozartian soprano Margaret Price,
who never sang the role of Isolde on stage. The same is true for Plácido
Domingo, who sang the role of Tristan to critical acclaim in
the 2005 EMI release under the baton of Antonio Pappano despite never having
sung the role on stage. In the last ten years acclaimed sets
include a studio recording with the Berlin Philharmonic by Daniel
Barenboim and a live set from the Vienna Staatsoper
led by Christian Thielemann.

There are several DVD productions of the opera
including Götz Friedrich's production at the
Deutsche Oper in Berlin featuring the seasoned Wagnerians René Kollo and Dame
Gwyneth
Jones in the title roles. Deutsche Grammophon released a DVD of
a Metropolitan Opera performance featuring Jane Eaglen and Ben Heppner, conducted by James Levine, in a
production staged by Jurgen Rose and a DVD of the 1993 Bayreuth
festival production with conductor Daniel Barenboim and featuring
Waltraud Meier as Isolde and Siegfried Jerusalem as Tristan, staged
by Heiner Mueller. More recently Barenboim's production at La Scala, Milan in the production by Patrice Chereau has also been issued on
DVD. There is also a technically flawed, but historically important
video recording with Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers from a 1973
live performance at the Théâtre antique d'Orange,
conducted by Karl
Böhm.

In a world first, in 2009 British opera house Glyndebourne made
available online a full digital video download of the opera for
paid download, filmed two years previously[29].

Concert extracts and
arrangements

The Prelude and Liebestod is a concert version of the
overture and Isolde's Act 3 aria, "Mild und leise". The arrangement
was by Wagner himself, and it was first performed in 1862, several
years before the premiere of the complete opera in 1865. The
Liebestod can be performed either in a purely orchestral version,
or with a soprano singing Isolde's vision of Tristan resurrected.
Confusingly, Wagner himself preferred to call the Prelude the
"Liebestod"[love-death] while Isolde's
final aria he called the "Verklärung"
(Transfiguration).

Franz Liszt made
a piano transcription of the Liebestod, his S447, that
exists in two versions, those of 1867 and 1875. Another composer to
rework material from Tristan was Emmanuel
Chabrier in his humorous Souvenirs de Munich - quadrilles
on themes from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.[30]

^
Wagner inserted a note in the score concerning the cor anglais for
which the part was originally scored, and advised the use of oboe
or clarinet to reinforce the latter, the effect intended being that
of a powerful natural instrument, unless a wooden instrument with a
natural scale be specially made for the part, which he thought
preferable. — "Holztrompete".
Encyclopædia
Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.

Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde) is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. As always, Wagner wrote the words for the opera himself. He took the famous old legend which had been told by the Germanpoet Gottfried von Strassburg

Contents

The story of the opera

Act I

Isolde, an Irishprincess, and her maid, Brangaene are on Tristan’s ship, being taken to King Marke’s lands in Cornwall where Isolde is to be married to the King. The opera opens with a young sailor singing about a “wild Irish maid”. Isolde thinks he is singing about her. She is furious and wishes the sea would rise up and sink the ship, killing all on board. She is particularly furious with Tristan, the knight who is taking her to the king. She asks her maid to get Tristan, but he will not come because his is steering the ship. His henchman, Kurwenal, speaks crossly to Brangaene, reminding her that Isolde’s previous fiancé, Morold, had been killed by Tristan and his head sent back to Ireland.

Brangaene returns to Isolde to tell her about what was said. Isolde sadly tells her how, after Morold had died, a man called Tantris had been brought to her because he was seriously injured, and that she had made him better using her powers of healing. However, she then found out that his real name was Tristan. He was Ireland’s worst enemy, and he was the man who had killed Morold. Isolde had tried to kill him with a sword, but when Tristan had looked into her eyes her heart had become full of love and she had dropped the sword. Tristan had been allowed to go back to Cornwall. However, it seemed now he had told his uncle, King Marke, all about the beautiful Isolde and had come to get her so that his uncle could marry her. Brangaene tries to make Isolde see that Tristan is doing an honourable thing to make her Queen of Ireland, but Isolde will not listen. She is furious, and wants him to drink a potion which had been intended by her mother for King Marke and Isolde as a love potion, but for Tristan it would be death.

Kurwenal now appears and says that Tristan has agreed after all to see Isolde. When he arrives, Isolde tells him that she now knows that he was Tantris, and that he owes her his life. Tristan agrees to drink the potion, now prepared by Brangaene, even though he knows it may kill him. As he drinks, Isolde snatches the rest of the potion from him and drinks it herself. They both believe they are about to die, and they declare their love for one other. Kurwenal comes and says that King Marke is arriving. Isolde asks Brangaene which potion she prepared and is told that it was not the death poison, but a love-potion. Outside, the sailors welcome the arrival of King Marke.

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Act II

A group are hunting and night. King Marke’s castle is empty except for Isolde and Brangaene who stand by a lighted torch. Isolde keeps thinking that the hunting horns are far enough away for her to put out the flames, giving the sign for Tristan to join her. Brangaene warns Isolde that one of King Marke’s knights, Melot, has seen Tristan and Isolde looking at one another lovingly. Isolde, however, thinks that Melot is Tristan’s best friend, and, desperate to see Tristan, she puts out the flames. Brangaene goes to the castle walls to keep a look-out as Tristan arrives.

Tristan and Isolde can now tell one another they are madly in love. They do not notice the night is ending, and Melot leads Marke to find the two lovers in one another’s arms. Marke is desperately sad because Tristan has been betrayed and also because he himself had come to love Isolde.

Tristan now asks Isolde if she will follow him again into the night, and she agrees. Melot and Tristan fight, but then Tristan throws his sword to the side and is seriously wounded by Melot.

Act III

Kurwenal has brought Tristan home to his castle at Kareol in Brittany. A shepherd plays a sad tune on his pipes and asks if Tristan is awake. Kurwenal says that only Isolde’s arrival can save Tristan. The shepherd says he will keep watch and pipe a happy tune to mark the arrival of any ship. Tristan now wakes up and is sad that it is daylight. His sadness turns to joy when Kurwenal tells him that Isolde is coming. He asks if her ship is in sight, but only the shepherd’s sorrowful tune is heard.

Tristan sinks back again. He remembers that the shepherd’s tune is the one he had heard when his father and then his mother died. He collapses. The shepherd now pipes the arrival of Isolde’s ship, and as Kurwenal rushes to meet her, Tristan in his excitement tears the bandages from his wounds. As Isolde arrives at his side, Tristan dies while speaking her name.

Isolde collapses beside him as the appearance of another ship is announced. Kurwenal sees Melot, Marke and Brangaene arrive and furiously attacks Melot because he had killed Tristan. In the fight both Melot and Kurwenal are killed. Marke and Brangaene finally reach Tristan and Isolde. Marke is terribly sad. He explains that he has heard about the love-potion from Brangaene and he had come because he had decided that Tristan and Isolde should be united. Isolde seems to wake but, in a last aria describing her vision of Tristan risen again (the “Liebestod”), dies of grief.

The Tristan chord

The very first chord in the piece is very famous. It has become known as the Tristan chord. Although it had been used before, the way Wagner used it here was quite new. It makes the harmony very hazy, and the listener does not know for many bars what key the music is in. It creates a lot of tension. There are many other moments like this in the opera. The tension goes right through the opera. The story tells of a tension that can only come to rest through death.

Prelude and Liebestod

The Prelude and Liebestod is a concert version of the overture and Isolde's Act 3 aria, arranged by Wagner, which was first performed in 1862, before the first performance of the opera itself in 1865. The Liebestod can be performed either in a purely orchestral version, or with a soprano singing Isolde's vision of Tristan brought back to life.